into the world of night
by Ruadhnait
Summary: I will never forget him. Tauriel, revenge, and a new path.


(_It's just a token._

_A promise. To my mother. That I'd come back to her_.)

Kili was so still. Tauriel's fingers were still clenched tightly around his. The leather of his gloves was rough and cracked, well worn. She squeezed more tightly, willing the hands beneath to be warm again.

He could have been sleeping. His eyes were closed, one cheek turned slightly away from her. His mouth was set in the smallest of frowns. He looked like he had that night in Lake-town, in Bard's house, when the fever had left him and he'd slept easily at last. Restful. Peaceful. Tauriel reached out and brushed the tips of her fingers along his cheek. His flesh was still warm. He had been so -

- so _alive. _

(_She thinks I'm reckless_.

- _Are you?_)

"You blind, bloody fool," Tauriel whispered. She smoothed his tousled hair away from his forehead. "You utter fool."

(_Nah. _He'd laughed, and at that same moment, the stone had slipped out of his hand and skittered across the floor. Tauriel saw it coming, caught it with the toe of her boot.) It was a plain, simple grey stone, worn smooth from perhaps countless years being washed in the rippling waters of some river near Kili's home. She wondered if it was many years old, a family heirloom perhaps, or if Kili's mother had made it for him when he'd left her for the last time.

Tauriel couldn't read the Dwarvish runes carved into it; they weren't the Sindarin letters she was accustomed to. She realizes now that she never asked what they meant, and now she'll never know.

(_It's a gift. Keep it_.)

She folded his fingers gently around the stone and placed his closed hand over his heart. _His sword. He should have his sword._ It was lying a few feet away, resting on the stones where it'd fallen when Bolg -

- she couldn't think about that. Couldn't - Tauriel closed her eyes tightly, then opened them again. She reached over and picked up his sword. The Dwarf-forged steel gleamed dully in the pale afternoon sunlight. Tauriel folded the fingers of his other hand around the leather hilt. The blade is still stained black with Orc blood. _I want that to stay there. I want them to know how he died. I want them to know how many he slew trying to -_

(_save you, Tauriel_)

"You shouldn't have," she told him. She bit her lip firmly. "I never wanted you to - "

_I never would have asked you to die for me, Kili_.

Never would I ever -

(_They are your people_, she'd told him. _Go with them. _She'd sent him away, she'd - )

He would have gone with Fili and Bofur, though. Even if she'd tried to make him stay, he would have gone with them. Dwarves were like that. Tauriel wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Loyal to a fault.

(_I know how I feel_, he'd burst out impulsively there on the shores of Esgaroth. _Tauriel, you make me feel alive._)

She knew. She remembered what he'd said the night before. _Do you think - _

He'd been still feverish, barely conscious. - _she could have loved me …_

(It was a memory. It was a dream.)

She'd known that, for both of them, it had been more than a fever dream, more than a fleeting fantasy. What he'd said to her - Tauriel knew how much of his pride it had cost him. Dwarves didn't discuss their _emotions _so freely, much less out in the open in the midst of a crowd.

(When Tauriel was a very small child, she'd asked her mother one day why King Thranduil had no wife. Her mother had explained to her, quietly, that it was because the queen had been killed many years ago. Tauriel had considered this for a moment, then asked why the King hadn't married again. Her mother had looked shocked, then said, "Oh, no, child. You have to understand that the Elder Children of Ilúvatar give their hearts to only one person in all the years that the world lasts. The king will never marry again, because he will never love again.")

_I will never love again_.

The afternoon was fading quickly to dusk, the shadows lengthening.

_Why does it hurt so much? _she'd asked Thranduil, sobbing, tears running down her cheeks.

_Because it was real_, Thranduil had answered quietly.

For the Eldar, the first love is also the last. There is only ever one.

_Because it was real._

_I will never love again. _

_And you are gone. Kili, you are gone._

She bent over and kissed him again. His lips were cold. _Oh, Kili - _

The winds that come howling out of the North were whistling across the icy plain, moaning in the bare branches of the skeletal trees. Tauriel shivered. Winter was coming.

_Winter is upon us all. _

Kili. _Kili. You can't be dead. Not you - _

Somewhere, someone was screaming.

If Tauriel cried now, her tears would freeze.

_Kili. Do you know how much I loved you. _

When the dusk had faded to a moonless, starless, bitterly cold night, when the surviving members of Thorin's company came back to the freezing wasteland where Fili, Kili, and Thorin had died, Tauriel was still kneeling beside Kili's body, her hands clasped around his. The Dwarves paused, uncertainly. It was Dwalin who stepped forward. "My lady," he said quietly. "We need to bring Kili back to the Mountain."

Tauriel didn't answer. Her head was bent, her face in shadow. There might have been tears glistening on her face; Dwalin couldn't tell. "My lady," he said again. "Please-"

"No," Tauriel said thickly. "I can't-"

"He needs to return to his own people," Dwalin said quietly. "He needs to rest beside his brother and his uncle."

"I can't leave him again," Tauriel whispered. "I can't."

Dwalin bowed his head. "Will you come with us?"

Tauriel was silent for a moment, then she nodded. She stood, her joints aching and stiff from the cold, then helped the dwarves lift Kili onto the bier constructed hastily from cedar branches. She made sure that his sword stayed in his hand, and that the stone from his mother was clasped in the other hand. She brushed his hair away from his face and kissed his forehead, one last time. And when Dwalin and Balin and Bofur stooped to lift the bier on their shoulders, Tauriel carried it with them. They made their way slowly down the crumbling stone pathway, slippery with ice and blood, and when they reached the foot of the hill where Azog had commanded his armies, where Fili, Kili, and Thorin had died, they didn't stop to rest, but kept moving, across the withered plain before the gates of the Lonely Mountain. The grass was still damp and slippery with the blood of the Orcs and Elves and Dwarves who'd died there. They had to pick their way carefully among the corpses. It was a long way to the Mountain itself, easily a mile or more, and Kili was not light; the branches of the bier cut cruelly into Tauriel's shoulders. The Dwarves showed no signs of weariness; they were Durin's sons, hard and strong as the stones to which they were born, implacable as the cruel mountain they called home. Tauriel didn't tire easily, either. The Eldar were strong; they had to be, to endure the evils of thousands of years, and Tauriel had more strength than just that of an immortal. She was a warrior, hardened by years of battle. And for Kili, she would have done anything.

_I never asked you to die for me. Kili, you deserved better than this. You should have lived to see the victory won. You should have lived. _

Her breath hitched in her throat. She almost stumbled, but then she caught herself and kept walking. The red glare from the torches that the Dwarves carried cast flickering shadows on their faces. The rising wind whipped Tauriel's hair around her face; the torches sputtered, and some went out.

The gate of the Lonely Mountain loomed black and huge in the darkness. When they crossed the makeshift bridge of fallen stones, Tauriel could see the rippling waters of the river glistening far below. Inside the mountain itself, the cold breath of the air raised the hairs on the back of Tauriel's neck. She was a Woodland Elf to the bone, and even though she'd been inside Thranduil's own subterranean palace many times, she still yearned for the free air of the outside world. The air inside the mountain is musty and stale; it smelled of dragon, death, and decay. Dust lies thick on the flagstones of the entrance hall, and even though all the torches flare brightly in their brackets, beyond them lies the deep, impenetrable gloom of the endless halls beyond.

_This would have been this home, then. _Tauriel and the Dwarves carry Kili far inside the Mountain, up winding stairs and through empty, echoing chambers, until they reach a chamber near the very center, lit with sputtering torches, the cracked stone floor thick with dust, where Fili and Thorin had already been laid in preparation for the funeral. They bent down and laid Kili beside Fili and Thorin. Tauriel was stiff and sore from the long journey. Dwalin took a careful look at her, then jerked his head at the other Dwarves, and they followed him silently out, leaving Tauriel alone.

Tauriel took a step closer to Thorin's bier and stared down at the king. Even though an ugly gash split Thorin's skull near the hairline, and although she could see the dark stain in his leather jerkin where Azog's sword pierce his gut, his face was serene, peaceful in death. Tauriel never really saw before how much Thorin resembled his nephew; they shared the same black hair, the same dark, heavy brows, the same strong jaw and high, noble forehead. Fili lay beside him; his flaxen hair was stained with blood. Even numb as she was, Tauriel felt another pang. She remembered how, when Kili had been sick, how Fili'd stayed with his brother against Thorin's command. How Fili's hand would stray to Kili's shoulder from time to time, seemingly without his thinking about it. When Smaug had come and they'd had to leave, Tauriel had seen Fili heaving Kili into a sitting position and squeezing his shoulders tightly. "Come on, brother," he'd said bracingly. Clearly, they'd been not only brothers, but best friends.

And now they were in death as they had always been in life. Together.

At some point, Balin had re-entered the hall and come up silently beside Tauriel. When he spoke, Tauriel started, taken by surprise. "Lady - Tauriel," he said, clearly just barely remembering her name. "Will you stay for the feast? And the - " he paused for a moment, "the burial?" Tauriel turned to face him, surprised. She'd always assumed that Dwarves were as secretive about the burial of their dead as they were about so much else. Yet here was Balin, offering her a place at the funeral of one of his own kin. It was kinder than what she would have expected of a Dwarf.

(Once, she would not have expected a Dwarf to speak to her about a firemoon rising over the Misty Mountains in the same rapturous tones that she'd always thought they reserved for their precious gold and mithril. Once, she would not have expected a Dwarf to tell her that he loved her. Once, she would not have expected a Dwarf to die for her.)

Tauriel has learned much. Too much.

She swallowed, then spoke with some effort. "You are kind, Lord Balin," she started hesitantly.

He cut her off. "Please," he said with a small smile. "I'm no lord. 'Balin' will do."

"Then I am not a lady either," Tauriel said, attempting a smile in return. "I'm merely a lowly Woodland Elf, and my king has banished me. I don't deserve any such title. But," she continued, "I am honored by your offer, but I would rather not." Balin looked puzzled. Hastily, attempting to explain, she continued, "I am a stranger here. Kili deserves to be - buried" - the word stuck in her throat - "among his kinfolk. With his kinfolk in attendance. It is not for me. Balin, I'm sorry. I can't. I can't - "

"He would have wanted you to be there," Balin says, and Tauriel jerked. She exhaled slowly, then said,

"That may be. But I think it's better that he be buried according to the customs of his people."

Balin looked momentarily like he wanted to say something else, but then he said, "As you will, then. Pardon me," and he walked away quietly. Tauriel was left alone in the flickering torchlight. Truth be told, she didn't want to attend the funeral, not because she held the ancient traditions of the Naugrim in such high regard, but rather because she didn't think she could bear the sight of Kili, her Kili being shut up in some suffocatingly dark sarcophagus in the tombs of the Dwarf-lords at the very heart of the Mountain itself, with only the dust and the bats and the eternal silence of thousands of tons of crushing rock hanging over his head for company. Tauriel would hate that. If if had been up to her, she would have made for him a grave on some windswept hilltop, that the sun and the moon and the bright stars would shine on, that the rain would soak, that would blossom with flowers in the springtime and grow lush and green in the fall, some place fair and free. But such was not the way of the Dwarves. Tauriel closed her eyes tightly. _I can't leave him here_.

_You left him on the shores of Esgaroth. Go with your people, you told him. And he has. You knew this would come, Tauriel. You knew that when you sent him away, you were sending him to his death_.

She stood there, very still, for a long time, with her arms wrapped around herself. She had no more tears. She was bone-dry as the stones of the Lonely Mountain.

_Think of it, Tauriel. You will not see him again, not even if you were to kill yourself. Not until time ends, not until the world is broken and remade will you see him again. And even then you might not. No one knows. The Naugrim are not children of Eru, they are the children of Aulë. Their fate is apart. No one knows. No one will ever know._

_Never. Never again. _

_Never. Oh, Kili. _

It was so _cold_. Tauriel was beginning to shake uncontrollably. She clenched her hands tightly, feeling her nails digging into her palms and piercing her flesh. It hurt, but not enough.

_I will never see him again. _

Kili. She remembered his bright, guileless smile, the way it could light up a room. The warmth of his hand in hers. She remembered him standing there by the lake, pleading with her, his eyes desperately seeking hers. Telling her that he loved her.

She remembered how he'd shuddered when Bolg's blade had pierced him. How his eyes had found hers one last time, before the light left them forever.

_I will never see him again_.

She didn't remember kneeling beside Kili's bier, but now the cold, hard stone was biting into her knees. The darkness of the Mountain was pressing around her, seeping into her bones, beating against her skull. She'd always known of the gaping chasm that separated the fate of the Naugrim from the fate of the Eldar, but never before had she

seen it.

She reared back from Kili's bier, suddenly. _The dark is reaching out for me. It's coming to take me. It's - oh Eru. It's taken Kili from me and I am never going to see him again. _

_Never ever._

_Never ever ever. _

She stumbled to her feet and fled, out of the hall where the dead lay, her heart hammering frantically in her chest, her feet pounding against the stone. She ran through the halls of Erebor. _I have to get out. _The Dwarves had vanished; she was alone. The air of the Mountain was stifling, choking her. She ran until she found the gate; it was unguarded, and she burst through it, and then she was outside in the dark night with the wind howling across the plain and chasing ragged scraps of cloud across the moon. There she stopped, breathing hard.

_There are wolves in the wild. Wolves, and Orcs. Creatures of darkness. _She knew she should have been afraid.

Thranduil had broken her bow, but Tauriel still had her blades. _Let them come. _

She kept running, across the bridge and onward, across the plain where the five armies had fought and wind tore at her; her throat was raw from the cold. Her heart was still thundering painfully. The darkness was chasing her, threatening to swallow her whole.

_I am never going to see him again. _

She ran until her heart was near bursting from exhaustion, until she could run no more.

_I could run to the end of the world and I would never find him again. I could beat against the Door of Night itself and he would not be there. _

_Kili. Kili - _

The world was reeling, the sky whirling dizzily above her. The earth tilted up to meet her as she fell.

She woke, several hours later, to the howling of wolves. She sat up abruptly, alarmed. It was mid-morning, the pale winter sun nearly to its zenith in a watery blue-white sky. She was stiff and chilled to the bone, and her clothes were ripped, filthy, and soaked through from the frost that blanketed the withered grass. Tauriel shook herself, confused, trying to remember. How had she -

The howling came again, louder this time. Tauriel sprang to her feet, reaching for her blades. The wolves sounded close, like they were just beyond the next ridge. Her heart was pounding. She'd run off, foolishly, and she was on her own now, really alone. Legolas had left; he'd set off North without so much as a word of goodbye to her. She was one Elf, alone in the wilderness, armed with two slender blades and nothing more. She was accustomed to fighting the giant spiders of Mirkwood, not the Orcs and wargs of the wild. She was -

And then she saw them. Orcs of Gundabad that had somehow escaped the carnage of yesterday's battle. Perhaps they were deserters, traveling south to terrorize the villages and homesteads along the edge of Mirkwood, avoiding the North, where they might be recognized by their former comrades. Tauriel counted quickly; there were five of them, all riding huge, hideous wargs of the North with their wide, slavering maws and wickedly sharp fangs.

Outnumbered ten to one. Tauriel's heart began to hammer even more rapidly. She was exhausted and practically unarmed. _I am no match for them. I am going to die_.

_There are much worse fates than death. _They were thundering across the plain towards her; they were nearly upon her. She unsheathed her blades, set her feet, and let them come.

They had scented her. Bloodthirsty smiles twisted their misshapen features, and their ugly yells of triumph filled the air.

Tauriel let them come. The foremost warg and his rider were maybe ten feet away from her when she let loose one of her blades. It whistled through the air and sunk deep into the throat of the Orc riding the warg. Tauriel saw it stick there, quivering, the thin rivulets of black blood snaking down the Orc's throat, the ludicrously surprised look on the Orc's face as he lurched forward, clawing at his neck.

For all of two seconds, maybe, she saw this. Time seemed to slow, eerily. Tauriel saw the battle unfolding around her in slow motion.

And then the crazed warg was thundering past her. Tauriel leapt swiftly onto its back and wrenched her blade free from the Orc's throat as she drove her other blade into the warg's neck, severing its spinal cord; the knife came free in a fountain of blood as the Orc toppled off the warg's back; although Tauriel ducked, the side of her face was still splattered with gore. Both of them were down, the dead warg tumbling head over heels down the ridge as Tauriel jumped off its back to face the four other wargs and their riders bearing down on her.

Her instincts reacted before her mind did; she hurled one of her blades straight at the skull of the warg charging at her. It lodged there, and as the warg skidded to a halt, its rider was thrown forward and landed with a heavy thud on the grass. Tauriel wrenched her knife free from the warg's head, ignoring the fallen Orc, at the same moment that she slammed her other blade into the yawning gullet of another warg. Its rider leapt off, yelling, and Tauriel threw a punch at his unguarded mouth. It struck home; howling, he clutched his bleeding, broken jaw, and Tauriel kicked him in the groin. He crumpled to the ground and didn't get up again. She took too long yanking her blade out of the warg's throat, though, and realized her mistake when an orc-scimitar sliced into her shoulder. She gasped at the sudden pain and the warm wetness soaking her shoulder, but rage replaced her pain almost instantly. She hacked at the Orc who'd struck her; he tumbled off his wolf, and just as the wolf itself hurled itself at her, Tauriel stuck her knife in its belly as it came crashing down on top of her. She rolled out of the way just in time to face the last Orc and warg. The Orc made a mighty swing with his own sword, which Tauriel just barely missed; when she ducked, she heard it whistle dangerously close to her head. Desperate, she shoved her knife into the underside of the wolf's throat, but in its dying throes, it rolled over, and Tauriel couldn't retrieve her knife. She was left with only one blade as the fallen Orc shook himself and came charging at her, brandishing his sword.

Her slender, short knife couldn't match his long sword. She'd have to get in close, but she couldn't, not with the battle-axe he was waving around in his other hand.

All this went through her mind in the second that she hesitated before hurling her remaining knife at the Orc's face. He saw it coming, though, and swerved to the side as it sailed harmlessly past him and landed somewhere in the grass. Seeing her unarmed, the Orc charged, swinging his axe, but Tauriel saw him coming. Her hand flew out and struck him in his unguarded throat; he lurched backward, wheezing, and Tauriel leapt at him and bore him to the ground. Left with no weapon but her hands, she was punching, kicking, and scratching every inch of him she could reach. She grabbed his arm, twisted it back, and heard it snap. He howled in rage and agony, as his axe fell out of his now useless hand and Tauriel stomped on his other wrist, causing him to drop his sword as well. Then she gasped with pain as she felt herself tugged backwards; he'd grabbed hold of her hair and was yanking on it. Tauriel tried to twist out of his grasp, but it was no good. He was slowly, inexorably bearing her to the ground, and she heard his gurgling hiss of triumph, saw the malicious grin twisting his hideous face, smelled the rotten meat on his breath. _No_, Tauriel thought, struggling wildly. _Not like this_. She wrenched herself forward, then cried out in sudden, agonizing pain as she felt a large hank of hair ripped out of her scalp. She stumbled forward as the Orc lurched backward, but then she flew at him again, wrapping her hands around his throat, squeezing as tightly as she could as she pinned him to the ground. He kicked wildly, but she hung on, and gradually his struggles grew fainter and fainter and then stopped altogether, his face turned dark with blood, his tongue lolling out, his eyes glazed over in death.

Tauriel didn't let go for a long time, and when she did, she stumbled backwards and landed hard on her backside. She sat there for a while, breathing hard. Five Orcs and five wargs lay dead around her. The grass was trampled flat and stained with black blood. Tauriel's heart was still thundering. Very slowly, she heaved herself to her feet, then walked over to the nearest dead warg and pulled her knife out of its throat with some difficulty. She went back over to the last Orc she'd killed and stared down at him. The largest and ugliest of all them, he'd clearly been their leader. His skin was ghastly mushroom-pale white, his nose barely more than two slits above his mouth. Tauriel reached down and yanked off his helm, then hurled it away. His straggling hair was a sickly shade of yellow. Tauriel bent over and plunged her knife through his hairy leather vest, deep into his chest. She yanked it out again, watching the black blood flow sluggishly from the ugly, gaping gash in his chest, then plunged it again and again, hacking savagely at him until she'd slashed his chest and guts to bloody ribbons. Blood spurted out, spattering her face and neck. Finally, she drove her knife deep into the Orc's neck, slicing his thick, bulbous jugular vein wide open. She exhaled slowly, feeling a hideous sense of satisfaction coursing through her, then stood up again, aiming a final kick at the Orc's now mangled corpse.

Tauriel wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. They had all looked like Bolg to her, and all she could see was Kili gasping in pain when Bolg's sword had gone through him, and his eyes fluttering closed for the last time just before Bolg hurled him to the ground. _There are thousands more Orcs left in the world_, she thought. _Thousands and thousands and the Necromancer is always breeding more_.

_I am never going to stop until I hunt down and kill every last Orc I can find. Those foul creatures killed Kili. They're not just going to get away with that. _

She could almost hear herself shouting, like she had that last day in Thranduil's halls, _You like killing things, Orc? You like death? Then let me give it to you!_

Previously, she'd always hidden in the shadows of the trees with the other Elves of Mirkwood, but no more. She'd left Mirkwood. Thranduil would find someone else to be the Captain of his Guard. Perhaps he already had. She was never returning to the forest; Thranduil had seen to that. Legolas, too, for all his talk of loving her, had abandoned her. She was alone. Her road was her own to choose, and no one else's.

(Her mother had told her once, "The lives of the Eldar stretch on forever, Tauriel. We last as long as the world lasts.") The silent stream of time stretched on before her, flowing past her, sweeping her along with it.

Tauriel could see her world spread out before her, and it was crawling with Orcs. _I want to kill them all. _

_I like killing things, too, _she told herself fiercely. _And I want to kill Orcs until there are no Orcs left to kill._

_I will never love again, and I will never forget him._

It was now reaching mid-afternoon. Tauriel was still standing in the middle of the circle of corpses scattered around her. Her scalp still throbbed painfully, and when she put her hand tentatively on the back of her head, it came away sticky with blood. Her shoulder was still afire with pain, too, and it was bleeding profusely, soaking her blouse and her leather jerkin. Tauriel breathed out, slowly. She realized that she was going to have to let that wound heal on its own; there was no way she could have reached it to stitch it up, even if she had a needle and thread with her. Other than that wound and a few scratches on her face and neck, she was almost miraculously unharmed. Tauriel slowly began searching in the grass for her other knife; it took her a while, but she finally found it, lodged in the earth a few yards beyond where the last Orc had gone down. She bent down and picked it up; after wiping the dirt and blood and wiry warg-hair off the blade with her skirt, she made her way slowly to the stream that ran along the base of the rocky ridge a few hundred yards away. She leaned over it and, cutting a piece of her skirt off with her knife, soaked it in the stream, peeled her bloodstained shirt away from her shoulder and used the cloth to clean the dirt and dried blood out of her wound. It stung like the pits of Utumno, and Tauriel breathed in sharply.

Once she'd finished cleaning her wound, she reached for her knife again and leaned over the stream. She could see her bloody, battered face reflected in the glassy surface of the water. Then she raised her knife and began hacking off her hair. Strand after auburn strand fell to the grass. She kept cutting until nearly all her hair was gone, until she was left with only a short fringe around her ears. When she was finished, she barely recognized her reflection staring back at her from the water. With her nose bloody, her face bruised and crusted with dried blood, and her hair cut so short, she looked like a rebellious boy child, not Tauriel of Mirkwood.

All the Eldar took immense pride in their long, flowing hair. There was no mistaking the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach that she got as she stared at her hair lying around her in the grass. She reached and gingerly brushed the short stubble on the back of her neck. Her head felt strangely light and bare, and the wind seemed colder. _If Legolas saw me now, he probably wouldn't even recognize me_. She thought of Legolas riding North without a single word of farewell to her. Legolas interrupting Kili on the shore of Esgaroth. _Take your leave of the dwarf, my lady_. Legolas' blue eyes had been cold and hard as ice. Tauriel knew how bitterly Legolas resented Kili. How enraged he'd been by the possibility that she might love someone other than him. Tauriel's mouth twisted bitterly. Legolas might have hated his father, but he and Thranduil were alike in so many ways.

Tauriel stood, abruptly. It pained her to think of the friendship she and Legolas had once shared, but their paths had separated now, and she was determined not to regret any of her choices. The sun was sinking lower in the sky; it was almost touching the dark shadow of Mirkwood. Tauriel shaded her eyes and stared west, thinking of her home, and how, in all likelihood, she would never walk among those tangled trees again. _I should grieve, _she thought.

She could not, though. She could never walk in Thranduil's halls again without remembering the thirteen dwarves who'd been prisoners there, and of Kili. _There are too many ghosts in Mirkwood._

She could see her path laid out clearly before her. _I am going South. And woe betide every Orc I meet on the way. _

She turned her back firmly on Mirkwood and faced the brown, barren lands stretching out before her. She could already tell that it would be a red sunset. There was a wind rising in the east, sweeping across the plain.

_There are trolls in the Brown Lands_, she remembered. _Trolls with hoards. Stupid trolls who can be tricked into staying outside past dawn, and thus turned to stone. I can find a sword that way. A real steel broadsword, much more useful for killing Orcs than two knives. _

She'd left Mirkwood with enough lembas to last her for weeks. She'd refilled her waterskin at the stream, and there were enough creeks and little rivers crisscrossing the wilderness south of Erebor to keep her well supplied. She had her warm wool cloak with her, too. _I won't die of starvation or thirst or cold, anyway_.

And so it was that she set off south, into the gathering darkness and the storm rising in the east. _I will never forget him_, she told herself.

_I will avenge him. _Her heart cried out for revenge. She thirsted for blood. _I will avenge him. _

_I will see a thousand more sunsets red with fire and blood before I let them kill me._

Tauriel smiled.


End file.
